Netflix announced Wednesday morning that it was laying off roughly 6 percent of its work force, or about 1,000 employees, as the company confronts slowing growth.
Most of the affected employees worked for the product, technology, legal and human resources teams, the company’s co-chief executives told employees in a memo.
“Our mission — to entertain the world — is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, the co-chief executives, wrote.
Mr. Sarandos and Mr. Peters also noted that “our business is strong and growing,” and that the company remains on track to deliver its full-year forecast.
Still, Netflix’s share price is down more than 40 percent over the last year as the company has struggled with stalling engagement. Recently, the company has pivoted in different directions, including signing up dozens of podcasters and creators from YouTube to help boost viewing time, particularly during the daytime hours.
A year ago, Netflix accounted for 8.8 percent of all television viewing time in the United States, compared with YouTube’s 13.4 percent, according to Nielsen. This year, Netflix’s figure has slipped to 7.8 percent while YouTube’s has increased to over 14 percent, Nielsen said.
“Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Mr. Sarandos said at a Bloomberg conference this month.
Mr. Sarandos and Mr. Peters said on Wednesday that the company will “continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation.” A Netflix spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the memo.
This is the company’s widest round of job cuts since 2022, when Netflix experienced a rare dip in subscriber figures. Disney also announced a recent round of layoffs, and Skydance, the one-week old company that brought together Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is expected to undergo significant job cuts in the coming months as well.
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